My 2019 Whale Watching Trip

After two years (almost three) since I have went whale watching, I went again. This time however, my grandparents and my aunts from my mom's family came to visit us, and we decided to give them some fun. Since we figured the amount of people that ride the afternoon tours, we decided to go for the morning ones again--which starts at 10 AM. We got there early at 8 where we waited very anxiously for the trip to begin.

The Karin Lynn

Soon the crew of the water craft arrived, and we filed into the boat, the Karin Lynn, a smaller one this time, double decked, with the ship's bridge at the top. Although smaller, the boat had tables and benches on the upper deck, (I didn't take a clear look at the seating area on the lower deck--Sorry!), and a canopy that blocks tourists from the hot burning sun, but the best thing about the boat we rode, was that the ship was lower, meaning that all the jumping dolphins and tail slapping whales are closer to all of us!

Edge of San Pedro Port

When the ship started driving, the experience was the same, cold winds blasted my face against the hot June sun, the San Pedro port crawled by, and the gentle swaying of the boat, made it felt like a great day. The rocks that marked the port soon passed us by, and the helmsman increased the boat's speed that the wind slapped me hard and and almost made me freeze. I stood by the steps to the lower deck, and got my camera ready. One of the crew was standing next to me was peering through his large binoculars looking for signs of marine life, which from one of the crew, that studied marine biology, was to look for sprouts of water, and lots of birds.

Captain of our tour

Although we didn't see a whole clan of sea birds, we soon saw a few specks of some mammals poking through the water, which got everyone excited. The first dolphin I recalled seeing, was toward the 1'o clock position of the boat. The helmsman increased the boat speed, as we watched excitedly with burning spirits to see these playful dolphins. We neared to find two and they surfaced near the boat, but soon disappeared. We were all disappointed, we found the dolphins to find that they had abandoned us, but soon we found a larger pod of dolphins, which played with us for quite awhile (after we almost lost them...), swimming by us, bragging under the water surface of their magnificent beauty, as we all pulled out our cameras and took snapshots. We were informed by the marine biologist that these were bottlenose dolphins. It wasn't before long we decided to go farther into the sea.

Bottlenose dolphin

We soon found the largest pods of dolphins, and from the marine biologist, she claimed that these were common dolphins, larger and a bit more gray than the bottlenose dolphins that we found, and are usually found in larger amounts per pod. These common dolphins she explained, loves to play around ships, sometimes chasing the boats until it got too far. Common dolphins are also more present at a farther distance at sea, compared to the bottlenose dolphins that we spotted a few miles from shore. They hopped by the ship showing us their large bodies, speeding and diving under the boat, in hopes that we'd join them. There were enough dolphins that I didn't really have the aim the camera too far, and their jumping were pretty often, so I managed to catch their amazing divings. We decided to speed off, and some of the dolphins were following us, as if they don't want us to leave, but inside all of us, we didn't want to leave them as well.

A Dolphin taking a jump

For almost the rest hour of the two hour tour, we went around the ocean looking for anything that might hint the presence of a marine mammal, but none could be seen. At last when we entered the port we saw some harbor seals. They were all lazily basking in the sun, as if they didn't want to move. There were about twenty of them, some were tanish brown, one had black spots over a sea of white, and one was black all over.